Hear on this subject Mr. Kemble himself writing to the treasurer, and we shall have a perfect knowledge of the actual state of the concern: They are standing still in Greenwood's room for want of a little canvas." "We are all at a stand for want of colours." "If you will help us you shall have Cymbeline' and full houses, otherwise we must go on with the West Indian,'" etc. There was no thought, we see, of such a comedy as the "Will," for instance, which might bring twenty £500 houses, and cost them mere coats and waistcoats. And here, as to profitable management, there was compound error. Kemble cared little for any comedy, and for modern comedy not at all. Sheridan was satisfied if he saw the "Rivals" and the "School for Scandal " sparkling among the gloom of "dark December." Colman could have written "John Bull" as well for Drury Lane as he did for Covent Garden subsequently. He was much more turned to comedy than to tragedy they had employed him for "Bluebeard" and "Feudal Times." But for a comedy that was to take its rank with one of the modern Congreve, that never occurred to the cabinet of this political and bankrupt theatre. Cumberland was a sentimentalist in his late efforts, and when he

The

wrote for Mrs. Jordan, herself, he forgot her greatest power, and remembered only her delivery of Viola in "Twelfth Night." She was usually betrayed and deserted; Wycherley, and Congreve, and Cibber had conceived something perfectly in nature, which she appropriated to herself. moderns were little acquainted with unsophisticated minds, and drove rather at incessant business and pungent interest than the display of genuine character of whatever age. Besides this their female parts were comparatively unimportant the writers appeared to have lived, all of them, in chambers, and studied nothing female above their bed-makers. They knew nothing that constituted the true feminine feelings. They guessed only at the mental distinction that for ever exists between man and his helpmate - their young women had no character at all, and their old uniformly a bad one. Cumberland could write a flattery of the sex, but flattery is not likeness. General Burgoyne could do something more; but he was exhausted in a single field, and left nothing but his "Heiress" behind him to speak for the truly comic power that was in him. He could have written for Mrs. Jordan had he lived.

Although Mr. Harris properly estimated the

management of his rival, and certainly had every wish to confirm him in his course, he still did not like that it should be said of Covent Garden, "If you want to see tragedy you must go to the other house." An old prejudice among the people of middle life had settled the expectation of a tragedy on Monday nights, and he had done what he could to comply with this wish, as far as "Romeo and Juliet" and "Hamlet" would go; but he had no first-rate actor, since the loss of Hendersonnothing that wore the cast of thought, or could stand a competition with that critical skill in Kemble, which, though long sneered at as pedantry, was at last admitted to contain very different power, and to be as much distinguished for intense pathos, manly grace, and heroic ardour, as it had ever been for the dry proprieties of the genuine text of his author, or the new versions he had given of either his meaning or his action. Indeed, by some very recent displays, he had removed the disparity which some had discovered between his sister and himself, and in the novelties from the German stage in particular, among which I place Penruddock, with the Stranger and Rolla, he had to the picturesque joined an art of delivery so consummate, that it was frequently

said, though nature in some respects had been kinder to his sister, yet that he was, without a doubt, the greater artist.

In this state of things some favourable reports were received from Dublin of an actor exceedingly eccentric, but certainly a master in his art, who had an ambition to try his strength expressly against this very man, and to dispute the crown with him in Bosworth Field itself. His first appearance was on the 31st of October, 1800, and he fully answered the expectation he had excited. George Frederick Cooke was the son of an officer, and born in the barracks of Dublin about the year 1756, so that he came into the world about the same time as the gentleman whom he selected for a rival. He had been educated in the north of England, and by a custom among the scholars, "more honoured in the breach than the observance," had indulged himself in several private plays, and been applauded for his performance. To act became a passion with him. It is recorded that the first play he ever read was "Venice Preserved," which, at whatever distance, I shall term the most effective tragedy we have, after the "Othello" of our inimitable Shakespeare. When he left school he went, or was sent

to sea, and seemed condemned to commerce for life. A legacy, when he was of age, however,

made him master of his time for a season

- during

which he did nothing. a sailor, he would not loved, while he could enjoy himself in idleness; and he made his appearance on the stage about the time when he found it difficult to make it any where else. This was about the year 1778, at the Haymarket Theatre. He then for eight years together cultivated his talent in the provincial theatres, when a second legacy, by removing his necessity, rendered him capricious, and he played at Nottingham and Lincoln, at Manchester and Liverpool. He then went the York circuit with Wilkinson. Then, with extraordinary attachment, continued for years in the Newcastle company. In 1791 he was again at Manchester, and was invited to Dublin in 1794, by Daly, and in 1797 to the same place, under the management of Jones, passing the interval between them at Manchester, where he was in high favour. He was now standing successful upon the stage of Covent Garden, as King Richard the Third, and naturally put the following question to his new I friend the manager:

With the improvidence of endure the labour that he